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How to Eliminate More Non-Billable Hours in Your Company

As the leader of your company, you have a lot of challenges and responsibilities you must face. You’re keeping an eye on the day-to-day operations. You’re monitoring the financials and ensuring the company is running smoothly. You’re evaluating equipment and materials costs. You’re also in charge of marketing and managing your advertising message… However, none of these are your most important job.

Your biggest, and arguably most difficult, job is managing your people. You’re in the people business, after all. You’re selling your services to people. And you’re not the one selling them: Your employees are… over the phone and in customer’s homes.

Sometimes your people, no matter how talented they are, have a hard time staying motivated. The reason could be that they have little in their professional lives to motivate them. A lack of motivation holds people back and often keeps them from achieving their goals and your goals too.

Unmotivated employees and non-productive employees can be real profit killers. They turn jobs that have a minimum of non-billable hours into ones that spin out of control and less profitable than they should be. You could be losing hundreds and thousands in profits because you don’t monitor this “non-monitorable” line item.

Motivation costs could be added to each of your jobs – it’s really not a stretch. But there are ways to keep these costs down while keeping your employees happy. It’s okay to throw a few carrots out there to keep employees interested. One of the best ways is to add a line item to the job: “less non-billable hours adds bonus money to each paycheck.” Motivate your employees to become more productive by rewarding them with something they cherish – cold, hard cash.

By giving them a little extra cash you could be giving yourself a lot more profit. Think about it.

1 Comment

That’s really great of you to share the dtaeil. Looking through the budget sort of affirmed my belief that everyone is a little different in where they want to spend their money. The one thing that jumped out at me was the cost of the rainwater collection system. I gather it’s this expensive because you plan to reprocess the water and use it indoors. Would it make sense to just direct the rainwater to the grey water system and use it in the garden? I would think that would cut this expense a lot and still allow you to recycle the water. I guess it depends on how much watering you plan to do. I know water is pretty expensive in Austin, and being a gardener, I hate to see all the parched yards when I visit. —–Bob

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